10GBase-T gains traction, but still too power hungry

10GBase-T Ethernet switch port shipments surged in 1Q13 to more than 150,000 ports, accounting for four percent of total 10 Gigabit Ethernet port shipments, a record percentage. 10GBase-T growth was driven by products that were announced in 2012, mostly based on 40nm ASIC introductions by component manufacturers such as Broadcom and Aquantia.

While this twisted-pair copper version of 10GE still consumes more power than other alternatives, the 40nm silicon process has allowed 10GBase-T to better compete on a power consumption basis. The smaller 40nm process also allows for a greater 10G port density on switches.

At Interop in May 2013, there were significant 10GBase-T product introductions from many vendors, so we anticipate 10GBase-T revenues will ramp in the second half of the year. Low ASPs of less than $200 per 10GBase-T port from many vendors by 4Q13 will also likely drive significant growth.

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10GBase-T switch chips are on the rise thanks to 40nm PHYs.

10GBase-T controllers and adapters for servers continued to ramp in 1Q13, with Intel shipping about 88 percent of ports. Most of the 10GBase-T shipments during the quarter were integrated LAN on Motherboard devcies, not separate adapter cards.

Due to Intel’s use of LOMs some of the 10GBase-T ports sold are not connected to 10GBase-T switches yet. This is supported by the difference between 10GBase-T shipments on servers versus switches, reported above. However, this gap is starting to close as 10GBase-T switch ports catch up.

Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, strong growth is expected in 10GBase-T server port shipments, as more 10GBase-T switches are introduced to the market.

However, this growth may underwhelm the projections of many component vendors due to several factors. First, 2013 will not see 10GBase-T LOM installed on many servers. Instead daughter cards will give customers choice.

Second, 10GBase-T PHY power consumption is still too high. Many customers rank power consumption as one of their top criteria in RFPs issued by cloud and large enterprise customers.--Analysts from Dell’Oro Group contribute a quarterly column drawn from insights in their regular market reports.

2-3W/port may be not an issue for server blades as not many of them are used. But it could be a big issue for ToR switch which may have up to 60 of them in 1U. I guess you have to use the same type of connectors on both ends of a cable especially in the case of an electrical or an optical cable. Considering a 10Gbase-SR consumes much less power than a 10Gbase-T.

I agree that with 2-3W/port power consumption as not a big deal (the first generation PHY's were in the 10W/port range). In comparison the FCoE ports are in the 1-1.5W/port range and also have advantages of supporting two different fabrics.
The power consumption in the 5W/port range is a concern for server blades but even those can be adequately designed for thermal margins.
MP Divakar

that last comment about PHY power needs some justification. why would 2-3W/port be considered a big deal? we're talking about a couple ports per server, so that's about 1% of the power budget.
price (incl switching) is the big problem. especially since for HPC, neither latency nor bandwidth are competitive with IB.

The ASPs have to go further south of $200 per 10GBase-T ports for the base-T market to proliferate.
The power issue has been a well-known concern for years now, I hope the smaller node and less power hungry designs can alleviate it.
What the article did not mention is the fact that many data centers are already wired for 10G base-T BUT have not yet fully utilized the fabric. It would be nice to know what percentage of 10G base-T fabric is still using the 1G appliances.
MP Divakar